Interim Step One: Let's Talk About Self-Judgment
Why Being Hard on Ourselves As We're Trying To Begin A Story Is The Exact WRONG Thing To Do
(This is a free post in my 22 Steps Craft Series because it’s the holidays, and I adore y’all for being here. I hope it helps you reassess your interior voice when you’re writing—and out in the real world, too.)
I just caught myself doing something terrible, and I wanted to share it with you, because it is the absolute death knell of creativity. It’s a nasty word that I despise. Judgment. Just look at it. It’s not pretty; it’s awkwardly spelled, with a combination of letters that aren’t common. (Look at me being judgy.) It’s ugly, and something I try hard to avoid if at all possible. From Mirram Webster:
judgment (noun)
1 a: the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing.
b: an opinion or estimate so formed.
2 a: the capacity for judging: discernment.
b: the exercise of this capacity.
3 a: a formal utterance of an authoritative opinion.
I spend a lot of time telling my writer friends not to judge themselves and their creativity. This comes from a place of tough love and complete understanding, because it’s natural, nay, inevitable, that you will, at some point in the process, judge your own work. It’s how we become better writers; it’s how we level up our craft. It’s how we let that self-judgment get into our heads that makes all the difference.
I started writing HER LAST NIGHT Monday afternoon. I’m a bit out of sequence with my steps, as I’m still in the research stage and haven’t even done my 40 Scenes yet, but the book is cooking in my brain, with dialogue forming and scenes beginning to gel, and when I found myself with a spare hour Monday afternoon, and instead of knocking off early to read, I decided what the heck, let’s lay down some words.
Reader, they were not good.
I have a certain standard for my openings. I generally have some sort of Prologue that sets the stage for the story. (See LIE TO ME, or IT’S ONE OF US, for examples of openings that I am particularly happy with.) Then the first chapter really draws you in, and, if I’ve done my job, you won’t be able to put down the book when the chapter ends.
But that doesn’t happen on Day One, no matter how much I like to think it does. I want to believe that when I put fingers to keyboard for the first time on a story, something magical will occur. The perfect open will pour out of me, and I will never look back.
All of this despite the fact that 90 percent of the time, I open in the wrong place. This is empirical truth. It happens every book. It took me years to figure this out, and that was when I stopped trying to write linearly and allowed myself to skip about, putting down scenes I knew would happen, and then reorganizing the beginning when I felt it was ready to be told. Starting in the wrong spot is fine. There’s no pressure when I start now, because I know that whatever I’ve written is probably not the first thing the reader will look at. What I wrote Monday probably won’t be the opening at all.
But in the midst of it, that wasn’t my thought process.
I’d pulled in a part of a previously written sequence that was cut from A VERY BAD THING (a murdered darling), which became the beginning of the Prologue, then wrote the first chapter. It didn’t sing the Hallelujah chorus, and I had a spike of anger toward it, and myself, for failing.
This isn’t good enough. It’s not intense. It doesn’t set the stage. What is it about this that tells the reader what kind of story they’re getting? It’s highly emotional, yes, but there is no dead body, to start, so how do we know we are reading a thriller? This could very easily be the opening of a woman’s fiction novel.
On and on. Until I pulled up short and said: Hey, you’re being awfully judgmental about something that’s lived in the world for less than an hour.
And then I ran over here to tell you guys not to be mean to yourselves, because I promised to live blog this book as major things happen, and this felt…important.
Beginnings are hard. I struggle with them, just like everyone else. But knowing I start in the wrong place helps me recognize that no matter how I feel about it, I started.
There is so much doubt, so much concern, so much pressure when you begin a book. I’m here to remind you to breathe through it, be a little easier on yourself, and remember that just because you wrote the beginning, that doesn’t mean you’re done writing the beginning.
Reminding myself of this, I stepped away. I tucked my disappointment with my inability to start strong back into its little box, logged my numbers (1220 words, huzzah!) and went upstairs to the gym, where I called my folks while I rode the bike. And while I was telling this story to my dad, it hit me. A way to make this opening a hell of a lot scarier and intense.
Judgment turned to glee. And then a knife appeared. 😈
As I’ve worked on this chapter this week, several things have happened. What I thought was the start has become part of a story inside the story. The knife has become an echo device for a previous crime. And my character, who was so flat when she appeared Monday, now has an entire interior life I wasn’t expecting. I’ve written her backstory in my notes, but until she spoke aloud to me, I didn’t know her at all. She just got complicated, in a deliciously devious way. The whole sequence is ten times stronger, and will continue to grow as its fleshed out.
I hope this is a small inspiration to you. We’re all hard on ourselves, but acknowledging that the voice that tells you it’s not right is different than the one who says YOU aren’t good enough will make your creative life a whole lot easier.
A housekeeping note: The 22 Steps series will continue after the holidays, as I’m taking a week off for Christmas, and then I must turn to my year-end activities for my Annual Review. Friday Reads will appear as normal, as will the newsletter. Merry Everything to you all!